go-Digital Blog on Digital Marketing

That wasn’t the most popular second-screen activity, of course, but it’s another indication of the growing influence of mobile devices on video viewing. Indeed, among a subset of countries, owners of the respective devices reported spending less time watching TV on a weekly basis, and more time using portable devices such as laptops, smartphones and tablets.

Ericsson’s list of identified activities being carried out on second-screens is by no means exhaustive, and tends to focus on more TV-related than unrelated activities. (Research has shown that most multi-screen behavior involved unrelated activities.) Nevertheless, it’s worth taking a look at the popularity of the various identified activities. The most common were: reading email while watching TV/video content (63%); using applications or browsing the internet to kill time (56%); using apps or browing the internet to find out more information (49%); and using social forums at the same time as watching TV/video content (40%). The study found fewer viewers competing with others watching th! e same sh! ow (14%) and interacting with the show through voting (13%).

While traditional TV is competing with online video sources, scheduled broadcast viewing remains popular. 83% of respondents from a subset of 9 markets (US, UK, Germany, Sweden, Spain, Taiwan, China, South Korea and Brazil) claim to watch scheduled broadcast TV more than weekly. That figure is up from 79% last year, and stable from 83% the year before.

By comparison, 63% of respondents from those markets are watching content on their own schedules, streaming on-demand and time-shifted TV and video content, including YouTube. The popularity of such content is gradually rising, from 62% last year and 61% in 2011.